Disproportionate Assets Case: Karnataka Deputy CM Shivakumar Gets Relief From SC

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to intervene with the Karnataka High Court’s order, which had granted an interim stay on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe against the state’s Deputy Chief Minister, D K Shivakumar, in a corruption case.

A bench comprising of Justice B R Gavai, Justice C T Ravikumar and Justice Sanjay Kumar, dismissed the CBI’s appeal against the February 10 order issued by the high court in the aforementioned case.

The Additional Solicitor General, SV Raju, stated that despite an order in favor of the agency, the division bench of the high court had provided an interim stay on the proceedings. Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, representing Shivakumar, pointed out that the CBI had appealed against an interim order of the high court but had not challenged subsequent interim orders passed by the division bench.

The Top Court bench expressed its decision not to interfere and granted the CBI the liberty to request the high court for expedited disposal of the case before it.

In February of this year, Justice K Natarajan, heading a single-judge bench of the HC, granted temporary relief to Shivakumar in connection with a Rs 74 crore disproportionate assets case from 2020, which was under investigation by the CBI. The Court provided the stay while seeking a status report on the probe after Shivakumar’s advocates revealed that his family members, including his wife and daughter, had received notices from the CBI to appear for investigation.

Later, in March, the same bench extended the stay.

In October 2020, the CBI filed an FIR against Shivakumar on corruption charges based on the income-tax department’s findings during searches conducted in August 2017 at approximately 70 premises linked to him. These searches occurred while Shivakumar was accompanying 42 Congress MLAs from Gujarat to a resort near Bengaluru, amid alleged poaching attempts by the BJP, to assist senior Gujarat Congress leader Ahmed Patel in winning the Rajya Sabha polls.

According to the CBI, Shivakumar amassed Rs 74.93 crore of wealth, disproportionate to his known sources of income, during his tenure as the energy minister in the Congress-led Karnataka government from April 2013 to April 2018.

The Enforcement Directorate arrested Shivakumar in September 2019 in connection with a money laundering case, and he was released on bail in October 2019. The chargesheet in the ED case was filed in May 2022 after a three-year-long investigation.